By Paul Raeburn on October 11, 2017
On Oct. 26, 2005, Alfred Caronia, a sales consultant for a little-known pharmaceutical company based in California, met with a doctor to discuss promotion of one of the firm’s drugs. The drug, a depressant called Xyrem, had been approved by the U.S. Food and Drug Administration to treat only certain patients with the sleep disorder…
Posted in FairWarning Investigates | Tagged Medical Errors, Pharmaceutical Industry and Drugs |
By Myron Levin on August 21, 2017
A Los Angeles jury today ordered Johnson & Johnson to pay damages of $417 million to a 62-year-old woman who blamed her ovarian cancer on years of using the company’s baby powder for feminine hygiene. It was the first California trial in the mushrooming legal battle over links between genital use of talc and ovarian…
Posted in FairWarning Reports | Tagged Environmental Safety and Health, Medical Errors, Pharmaceutical Industry and Drugs, Product Hazards and Recalls |
By Myron Levin on March 6, 2017
Editor's note: See update at bottom of story.
Breaking a string of lopsided courtroom defeats, Johnson & Johnson scored a legal victory Friday when a St. Louis jury rejected the claim of an ovarian cancer victim that her use of talc powders for feminine hygiene caused the disease. The defense verdict in St. Louis Circuit Court followed three plaintiffs’ victories last year with…
Posted in FairWarning Reports | Tagged Consumer Protection, Environmental Safety and Health, Medical Errors, Pharmaceutical Industry and Drugs, Product Hazards and Recalls |
By Paul Feldman on May 4, 2016
If you make truck deliveries in the overcrowded downtown streets of a big city, parking tickets might simply be a cost of doing business. For top drug companies, critics say, there’s an equivalent expense — the billions of dollars paid out to settle criminal and civil charges of illegal marketing practices, Medicaid overcharges and kickbacks….
Posted in FairWarning Reports | Tagged Medical Errors, Pharmaceutical Industry and Drugs |
By Myron Levin on February 23, 2016
Editor's note: Editor's note: See update at end of story
Johnson & Johnson has suffered a major courtroom defeat in the first in a wave of lawsuits claiming that talc products marketed by the company for feminine hygiene use caused ovarian cancer. A jury in St. Louis late Monday night ordered the health care products giant to pay $72 million in compensatory and punitive damages…
Posted in FairWarning Reports | Tagged Environmental Safety and Health, Medical Errors, Pharmaceutical Industry and Drugs, Product Hazards and Recalls |
A Private Contractor Flourishes Despite Controversy Over Inmate Deaths
By Brian Joseph on July 15, 2015
In July 2011, a jailhouse nurse in Imperial County, Calif., found inmate Marsha Dau lying naked and dazed on the concrete floor. Charged with illegally transporting aliens, Dau, 58, recently had been exhibiting strange and aggressive behavior. For her own safety, the jail put her in an empty, beige cell with no clothes. Now, three…
Posted in FairWarning Investigates | Tagged Medical Errors, Pharmaceutical Industry and Drugs |
on December 14, 2011
Federal authorities have warned a Southern California marketing company promoting Lap-Band weight-loss surgery that it is illegally engaging in false advertising that downplays the serious risks of the procedure. The Food and Drug Administration told the firm, 1-800-GET-THIN, that its billboards and print advertising “fail to provide required risk information, including warnings, precautions, possible side…
Posted in Warning Wire | Tagged Medical Errors |
on December 13, 2011
The world’s No. 1 maker of medical devices, Medtronic, has agreed to pay $23.5 million to settle federal allegations that it provided kickbacks to doctors who implanted its pacemakers and defibrillators. As Reuters reports, the U.S. Department of Justice accused the Minnesota-based company of making illicit payments to physicians of $1,000 to $2,000 per patient,…
Posted in Warning Wire | Tagged Medical Errors |
on November 29, 2011
Heart attack patients often wind up at hospitals ill-equipped to treat them, and their chances of survival sometimes depend on how quickly they can be transferred to another medical center. Yet a new study has found that nine out of 10 U.S. heart attack patients needing a transfer wound up waiting longer than the recommended…
Posted in Warning Wire | Tagged Medical Errors |
on November 29, 2011
Tens of thousands of soldiers serving in Iraq and Afghanistan suffer concussions and other difficult-to-detect traumatic brain injuries, often the result of bombings by insurgents. To identify troops needing care for these injuries, Congress in 2007 passed a measure requiring the military to test soldiers’ brain function before they deploy and when they return. But…
Posted in Warning Wire | Tagged Medical Errors, Workplace Safety and Health |
